But there were other moments too.
Moments when he got lost in the water, and let me watch him unguarded. Moments when he became so concentrated on the fish that he’d move closer without realizing it, and when he’d turn to get my response for whatever he was saying and realize just how close we’d gotten, his breath would stutter, and sometimes his eyes would even flick to my lips before he took a step back.
Moments when his anger thinned into exhaustion, and beneath it I could feel a question neither of us was ready to say aloud.
What happens now?
The answer, unfortunately, was not one I knew how to construct.
I had solved complex acquisition conflicts with less difficulty than this.
Cove’s captivity had required many practical decisions—physical containment, access restrictions, monitored movement, wound care, food and hydration, grooming, and controlled exposure to parts of the house that eased distress rather than increased it. Those were variables. Unpleasant variables, in some cases, but variables nonetheless.
Desire was less obedient.
It refused sequence.
It did not remain where I placed it.
It emerged at incredibly inconvenient times, not merely during his showers or after them when Cove’s clothing clung obscenely to his frame, but during moments that should have had nothing to do with sex at all. The way he frowned at Ben’s notes. The way his mouth parted with the prettiest sound when the puffer followed his finger along the glass. The way his voice gentled around the cuttlefish, as if tenderness were an instinct he could not entirely suppress even while furious. The way he still stared up at the box jellyfish like they were the most ethereal creatures he’d ever seen, even after he’d watched a body be pulled from their water.
I wanted to touch him when he was angry.
I wanted to touch him when he was calm.
I wanted to touch him most when he forgot himself and became vibrant again, animated by water and life and the peculiar, luminous intelligence that had first caught my attention.
I did not know what to do with any of that.
More inconveniently, I did not know what I wanted in practical terms.
That irritated me.
I understood wanting to keep Cove. I understood wanting to watch him, to protect him, to feed him, to build an environment where every frightened, defensive part of him eventually unfurled again and thrived under my ownership. I understood wanting to place my hand on the back of his neck when he trembled, and to feel his breathing steady because of me, instead of in spite of me.
But the body complicated matters.
Specifically, mine.
Mine had begun reacting to him in ways I found undignified and difficult to predict, and no amount of discipline altered the fact that sometimes, when Cove looked at me with fury and heat tangled in his eyes, my blood filled my cock so fast it made me lightheaded.
So I researched.
Research had always been preferable to ignorance.
That was how Ben found me at half past eleven that night, seated behind my desk with three browser tabs open, a notebook beside my laptop, and an expression I suspect was more severe than the situation technically warranted.
He knocked once on the study door and entered without waiting for a reply.
“You missed dinner,” he said. “Again. I know this will shock you, but you can’t survive on obsession alone.”
I did not look away from the screen. “I am occupied.”
“I gathered.” He took three steps into the study, then stopped so abruptly I heard the sole of his shoe catch against the floor. “Well, shit.”
I closed the laptop.
Not quickly, because there was no reason to be quick.
